Pirates. Those pesky pirates. If you cannot beat them, join them, or better yet, gather your mates and start your own little personal war against conformity!
Trades of the Expanse: Pirate is now out! You can find on the Green Ronin store and on DTRPG.
Pirate offers what we have come to expect from other Trades of the Expanse. How to understand, utilise, and play someone of the particular profession the supplement is about. Pirate does this quite well, with pages on a pirate’s life in the Expanse,
The first section covers how to find booty, loot, gather intel (where more than how; we already have good rules for that), and fixers that can provide leads for lucrative targets. It touches upon hostages and ransoms, and searching for ships in the vastness of space.
It advices us on how to make chases more interesting, the hide and seek of target and prey, and how to discern deceptive signals and sensor readings.
It touches perhaps too little on boarding and taking plunder, but the sidebar on page 6 is very flexible and inspiring. It helps the reader and GM to think slightly differently on challenge tests, in a way to enhance tension and gameplay. Personally, I’d prefer it to be a bit more fleshed out, like the stellar examples in Trader/Smugler.
Pirate also touches upon the fear factor, Jolly Rogers, insignias, calling cards, and so on. Again, very cool and thematically appropriate flavour text. It enters into interesting and good reflections on “pirate codes”, about the social contract of a pirate crew, both itnernal and external.
No Pirate supplement is complete without touching upon privateering, and a good two pages covers who may hire privateers, getting the letter, and the role of privateers i nThe Expanse.
We then come to the Tools of the Trade section. Unsurprisingly this have several ships, and two new qualities. the MaTEY navigational software and RCS Boost. The former is an open-source project to help pirates find targets. It’s neat, but can be unreliable. RCS Boost gives your ship an additional size reduction for certain manoeuvres, but lists the benefit as a flat bonus. While not entirely incorrect, it is inaccurate I believe. Both are cool and useful. The four ships are all well worth a look. I’m not going to enter into detail here. Go get it, with the current OPAJ discount you can get even cheaper.
For other gear, the supplement is cool, but short on supply. A semi-autonomous robotic drill, and lock breaker with Spotify, and some hallucinogenics to cause fear and anxiety (but without clear mechanics on how to apply or resist or duration and so on). All cool and interesting, and most definitely useful, but the level of usefulness depends entirely on the goodwill of your GM, and I guess the reasonablenss and persuasiveness of your imagination.
Finally, there’s the specialisation (Communication based of course!), more reputation honorifics, and Churn complications. The supplement ends like the other wit hthe Jobs Board, and several ready to slot in (and develop) NPCs.
If pirates are your thing, then I suspect this is a good supplement. The ships and qualities alone are great for any group, and the specialisation is great! The rest is a nice bonus.
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